Membership has its benefits. For public television viewers who support their local PBS stations with contributions of $5+ per month (or $60+ per year), a big benefit is access to PBS Passport, the public TV network’s on-demand streaming service.

Last fall, PBS Distribution and Walter Presents entered into an agreement that made available most of the latter’s US library of original-language, English-subtitled international TV shows on the PBS Masterpiece channel on Amazon Prime Video, and a hand-picked selection of titles — under the “Walter’s Choice” banner — to be streamed on PBS Passport (as well as broadcast on PBS stations).

Line of Separation is the third such selection. On August 1 its first season became available on Passport, joining Season 1 of both the Swedish noir crime thriller Modus and the hit Belgian mystery Professor T, which have been on Passport since February and May 2019, respectively.

Inspired by the actual village of Mödlareuth, Line of Separation (Tannbach) depicts the devastating effects of conflict on close-knit German communities after World War II.

The series opens during the final days of the war in 1945, in the small (fictitious) German town of Tannbach on the Bavarian-Thuringian border. While the inhabitants await the official end of the conflict, a group of Nazi soldiers commits one last horrific act before the Americans arrive. But shifts in the occupation zones soon put Tannbach in the realm of the Soviets.

In addition to their daily struggle to survive, Tannbach’s inhabitants must adjust to the Soviets’ Socialist regime, under which the expropriation of their lands and the deportation of the now-former landowners is instituted. But the zone borders keep changing, and by 1948 Tannbach is split down the middle along the lines of the river, with the Americans controlling one side and the Russians the other — and residents of Tannbach being severely tested in their loyalty and their love while trying to make the best of their situations on either side of the border.